judging a book by its cover

NaBloPoMo Day 22:How important are book covers in getting you to read a book?

I never judge a book’s readability by its cover.

Cover art has absolutely no impact on whether I choose to read a book. I am pulled in by titles all the time, but cover art? Not at all. I can’t say the opposite is true, though; I am sure that there has been many a book that turned me off by its cheesy cover art, though that’s hard to measure, since there is no quantifiable way to measure what you did not do.

Interestingly enough, I will often use cover art to decide whether or not to buy a book. I am such a sentimental goofball that if I buy a book, I want it to be the very edition that made me fall in love with the book originally. I’m a sucker for 1970s editions of children’s books, for instance; in fact, seeing a vintage text with a modern cover makes me cringe.

There are a couple of books – Pride and Prejudice, for instance, and Little Women – that I buy over and over because the artwork is different. I have many editions of each of those, none of them particularly valuable. I just like to see varying interpretations of my all-time favorites. (Okay, fine; I like to own them. I admit it.)

I don’t have it in me today to be long-winded; sorry! It’s been a weird, feel-like-I-got-run-over-by-a-truck week, so I am off to bed. But I have days off next week and my Blazers have won 9 straight, so I have nothing to complain about!